Folly or Feasible?

It was a few days earlier that I’d noticed the bruise. I hadn’t thought much about it, just caught a glimpse in the mirror and made the connection to the tenderness I’d been feeling. When neither the bruise nor the tenderness subsided, I started trying to remember when I’d banged myself. I’m klutzy, so bruises aren’t uncommon.

How would you even do that? File cabinet corner? Surely you’d remember that though.

I stood in front of the mirror, arm raised, staring at the side of my breast, trying to remember, but I couldn’t think of a thing I’d done. I shrugged it off, but each time my arm brushed my side it bothered me mentally as much as physically.

Stripping off my sweaty running bra I noticed it again. In the shower I pressed against it, meaning only to gauge how tender it still was but discovering, instead, a lump.

Really? Now? Now that I’m running, now that I’m making an effort to get healthy, now I find a lump.
It’s just a lump. That doesn’t mean it’s cancer. Lots of reasons for lumps that don’t mean anything nefarious.
Duh, but you know it’ll be just my luck. I’ve got a Disney princess half marathon to run, dammit. I don’t have time for this crap.
Being a little melodramatic, aren’t we? Just go get it checked.
Uh-huh, so I can find out that much sooner that all that soy milk I’m being so good about drinking is just feeding some estrogen extravaganza going on in my boobs?
Or don’t. Just keep imagining the worst.
I don’t need to imagine. I’ve got Google and WebMD to do that for me.

At which point I promptly went downstairs and logged on to Google and WebMD.

It was either something simple or one of the truly bad boys of the breast cancer family. Like mother, like daughter. Technically, I have a family history of breast cancer. However, my mother couldn’t get something normal — no less scary or potentially lethal, to be sure, but at least understood and with known treatment protocols. No, she had to get New England Journal of Medicine quality cancer. Let’s-call-this-surgeon-in-India-because-he’s-the-last-one-who’s-seen-it cancer. You’re the lucky-number-13th case in the world cancer. And since we don’t really exactly know what it is but it might kinda sorta could be, let’s just call it breast cancer.

So yeah, I was betting on it being the bad boy.

I pretended to ignore it while I waited for the gynecologist’s office to open so I could make an appointment. It was on my to-do to finalize the registration for the Disney Princess, but I couldn’t bring myself to submit the $250 team registration fee.

It seemed too much like tempting fate.